So she picks at him and today he hunches, but that matters no more than words. They don’t have time to prolong their hostilities this morning, but if they did they’d soon devolve into arguing about how they argue, she strident, articulate and unattractive, he semi-silent, scared and almost scary.

It used to be Marnie worried she would waste herself by being alone. She’d read the line about many a flower casting its perfume into the desert air, and when she was young she thought that meant it would be misuse for her to be single. Keith wasn’t abusive, after all, and he didn’t step out on her, and he earned a decent living. But lately she’s thinking it’s a waste to be with someone who’s such a drag. She hasn’t said that yet, and she knows Keith would disagree.

It used to be she thought a sad marriage was probably better than divorce, and a mediocre marriage was definitely better than divorce, especially with kids involved. Lately she’s started to question that. Now she thinks that marriage is useful if a couple is poor, but it’s a disadvantage if the participants can provide for themselves alone. It stifles, at least the woman. Anyway, the kids are grown and launched. And neither had ever been fooled about the quality of their parents’ marriage.

Again, Keith would disagree. He’d tell Marnie to look around at others. He’d assert that what they have is as good as it gets.

But there’s no time for that this morning. They’re nearing his building when they encounter one final snarl of congestion and Keith guns the car into the intersection. He’s accelerating through the end of a yellow light at the same time that he angles toward the right for the last turn when they encounter what feels at first like a big dip and then gives. The street beneath them drops away and their car falls seven feet straight down. Later they’ll learn that PG&E worked at that spot over the weekend and didn’t repatch/repave sufficiently. But at the moment they are stunned, unhurt, looking up out of their windows at a cloud of rising street dust.

They’ll be okay. Insurance will cover all damage. Marnie will laugh about it later, but Keith’s sense of humor may have atrophied by now.

As long as Marnie can remember, she has craved a witness. Someone who could watch her and see that, really, she’s a nice person. An interesting, sanguine, unthreatening soul. At her youngest she imagined her witness was God. A bit bigger, she fantasized that it could be her father. He loved her that much but he had his own life to witness. Like other strong desires of hers, Marnie has had to make it happen herself. And so it is that I am, projected out of her vigor, her first imaginary friend grown into an astral witness. I’m a packet of benign energy in the back seat of the car or lightly now on her shoulder as she is assisted to the gouged surface of the street. Ever watching. Mostly approving.